User talk:Xanadu~enwikiquote

FROM OLD SECTION
~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely Fabulous
I saw your note in the Absolutely Fabulous edit history about "getting better at your format". You definitely are picking up the customs, which have only recently been written up (mostly). You can find the most complete version of them currently at Firefly (TV series)/Format, but we're expecting to move them to a more generic place, since they're in use in most of the substantial TV show articles now.

I would say that four variances remain, the first two of which are especially important:
 * 1) Context lines (the bracketed comments introducing some dialog segments) should be complete sentences and should include punctuation, especially periods. Your context lines tend to be incomplete clauses and rarely end in periods, even when they're complete sentences. Note that this does not apply to what I call "stage directions", which are the similar-looking bracketed comments inside quoted text. Those should be as brief as possible (usually only a word or two), and should never be sentences. The intent there is to distract as little as possible from the actual spoken words. (In fact, inconveniently long stage directions were why we came up with context lines — to summarize information critical for understanding the quote and get it out of the way of the dialog.)
 * 2) I also recommend checking spelling and punctuation in the quoted text, especially trailing periods.
 * 3) A controversial issue is the use of quotation marks. "American" style is "double" quotes, whereas 'British' style is 'single' quotes. Wikipedia (and, by inference, Wikiquote) style adopts a punctuation compromise between the two: always use American-style double quotes, but use British-style punctuation placement outside of quotes unless the punctuation is part of the quoted text. (There are technical reasons besides the general spirit of cooperation that make this sensible, but I won't go into them unless you're interested.) Since both sides routinely violate this accord, I've used British-style quotes in Brit shows like AbFab and Blackadder in the past, but I've been switching to the official doctrine because of another good reason: the complicated apostrophe-based markup of dialog is easily confused with single quotes. Double quotes avoid this problem. (Well, except for the problem with some fonts, where double quotes look identical to two single quotes, but nothing's perfect.)
 * 4) There's no actual requirement, but it's not a bad idea to use the Unicode characters like ellipsis (…) and em-dash (—), available by clickable links on any edit page (below the save button), instead of three periods (...) and two dashes (--), to prevent possible line-splitting between characters and to save a bit of space. (The latter isn't really a problem for this article yet, but is for some huge articles like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

I commend your restructuring the article to divide the regular episodes and the specials, which is much tidier than the previous structure. I see, too, that you took advantage of expanding one quote to eliminate a no-longer-necessary context line, which is always a good idea. I also wanted to thank you for correcting my egregious error about who plays Patsy. I've liked Joanna Lumley since I first saw her in The New Avengers (however silly the show itself was), and I'm mortified that I stuck Dawn French's name in her place.

By the way, I highly recommend you create a user name for yourself, so that you can be properly credited with your contributions. It only takes a moment, and it actually enhances privacy (which some people are concerned about), because (A) you don't need to identify yourself by name, (B) you can but don't need to include your email address, and (C) IP addresses often reveal unnecessary information about their users, like who their providers are or what companies they work for. Also, even relatively fixed addresses aren't assured to remain that way. You can find yourself splitting your edit history if you have to switch providers or if your ISP restructures its IP scheme (which has already happened to me once). It's not required to register, but it helps the community feel a bit more comfortable about you and possibly take you more seriously on any issues that you might get involved in. (Okay, end of sales pitch. ☺) Thank you for your contributions! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:23, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Origin of name; IP talk page
I see from your user page that "Xanadu" comes from directly from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and not by way of Olivia Newton-John's film. I have to admit that my guilty enjoyment of this not-so-classic movie has surpassed that of Coleridge's timeless work. I'm sure I'm a disappointment to my mother, an English Lit major. ☺

By the way, you might want to copy over here the talk page material from User talk:70.65.179.198. When I went to comment on your username, I was a bit confused because I didn't see the discussion I was sure I had with you, until I remembered that you'd originally contributed as an anonymous user. It's probably a good idea to gather all these things in this more appropriate place. (After all, even when one has static IPs from an ISP or one's employer, such numbers change over time with network architecture changes.)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy your experiences here, and I look forward to your ongoing contributions. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Reply
Well, I'll attempt to copy that talk stuff over in a moment. But ya, I've never heard of the film Xanadu... Actually, I got it originally from Citizen Kane, the poem is quoted at the beggining of the newsreel segment, as well as Mr. Kane's estate is named Xanadu.

In other things, I am attepting to do my best. Although I can't see at the moment too too many places to contribute, I shall do my best. Xanadu 06:06, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Allow me to recommend the movie. A lot. I've always thought about it as "80s at their best", with roller-skates, innocent love and over-the-top extravagance. Also, Olivian Newton John :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:03, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Xanadu. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Xanadu~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:01, 19 April 2015 (UTC)